. >> how did you get involved in skwriting this book? >> it was a commission.ked me to do it. how i got involved in it is on the 50th anniversary i wrote an article for the higher education which is a newspaper for scholars and the article was about -- because i'd never read the feminine mystique as a student and so i read it for the first time then and at the time there were a number of books coming out that one of them was the end of men and there was another one by naomi wolf. i read these books and felt they took from betty's ideas or refuted without ever mentioning betty's name and then i read the feminine mystique and i was blown away by its gorgeously written although as i said it has these problems but it's so i wantedritten to write something about that and how betty has kind of been erased despite having written this powerful book and people really liked the essay so they asked me to write for the series this book and that's how it happened. >> what was your idea of betty when you wrote the book and how didov it evolve? >> of course i read the other b